Who haven’t you published yet that you would like to? Now, there are myriads of writers I would love to publish: Clive Barker (especially one of his Books of Blood-era stories), Mark Morris, Tim Lebbon, Lisa Tuttle, Joel Lane, Graham Joyce, Ramsey Campbell, Conrad Williams, Dennis Etchison, Sarah Pinborough... the list is endless... What book would you most liked to have published? Unequivocally, I would love to have published Tim Lebbon’s novella The Thief of Broken Toys – definitely one of the best reads of last year, hands down. Poignant, touching, and tragic on so many levels, yet strangely beautiful and moving nonetheless – just a magnificent example of great writing, spare but evocative. What next for Simon Marshall-Jones? I have absolutely no idea, but I am having fun finding out. My main priority right now, though, is to further establish the reputation of Spectral, and make it an imprint where writers would be thrilled to be published. I want to expand into other formats, maybe even e-books, and just explore what’s available out there. However, like I’ve said above, I want to do things slowly and not rush ahead and over-extend myself, which is what I did when I ran a record label for a couple of years. I learnt that being incautious inevitably leads to disaster. This is a long-term project, and as such it deserves careful nurturing and thoughtful consideration. I’ve learnt that hard work and dedication are the only things that will get you where you want to go, but that you have to ally all that with something that people will consider worthwhile. I am quietly confident that Spectral will become a staple of genre of publishing in years to come, and so that’s what I am aiming to achieve, and with luck it’ll happen. THE RECOLLECTION By Gareth L. Powell www.solarisbooks.com Powell’s strikingly clear and concise writing style works perfectly for his short stories, and his collection The Last Reef is a testament to this. That book is a remarkable collection of short stories, filled with wonders and ideas, as any SF collection should be. That Powell pilfers liberally from his stories contained in The Last Reef to create this novel, does detract from the enjoyment of it for anyone familiar with the collection. Ed is having an affair with his brother (Verne)’s wife and finds out Verne runs away, down
to Chancery Lane tube station in London, and through an alien Arch that suddenly appears on the escalator. When Verne doesn’t reappear, and when more of the strange Arches appear all over the world, Ed and his brother’s wife decide to follow Verne in an attempt to find out what happened to him. But as they travel through the Arches they find that each world they encounter takes them one step closer to Verne, but they are already ten years behind him. Four hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov is finally making it on her own. She has her own spacecraft, her family has disowned her, and her former lover is long gone. Until he reappears. And then an offer comes with her family, a race to Djatt to barter the latest harvest of the rare stimulant Pep. Can Abdulov beat her former lover to the Pep and reunite with her family? The Dho is a mysterious alien race that live in a world-sized spacecraft known as the Ark. When Toby Drake is invited to help his former professor study the ark, little does he know that he will discover the love of his life, and lose her, and realise one of the secrets of the universe. Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe, the Recollection is gathering. The vast, hideously powerful weapon is heading towards the humans and nothing can stop its devastating power... This is an intelligent, well-written and exciting science fiction novel with some great ideas, and a vast and all-consuming evil. The mildlydisappointing ending can’t really be helped, and the exploration of the futuristic worlds is concise. Powell’s writing style works brilliantly for short stories. For a full-length work though, it feels like we are only scratching the surface of the vast world he’s created. It feels like, for as much as we discover, we are missing out on the same amount. The world that we see is well-created, but there is so much more to find out. Anyone who has read The Last Reef may find a lot of the ground covered here familiar. I had a frown on my face for most of the book wondering where I remembered this scene from, or that person from. I recalled the brilliance of the collection, and felt that this book, although good and clever, and well-written, didn’t have the same wow factor, and what was so brilliant the first time, wasn’t so brilliant the second. A disappointing novel, in that it is not the masterpiece expected from Powell. But for any reader who hasn’t read The Last Reef, this is a clever, and at times, brilliant novel. Powell is definitely a writer to watch, and hopefully the second book in this series (surely there will be a